September 20, 2012

Former Facebook's Kevin Colleran: Insider View Mixed with Humor

Everyone knows Mark Zuckerberg's name and and if you live in Silcon Valley, you likely know a handful of other senior level Facebook execs as well.

In Kentucky, that's not the case, nor is it the case in other parts of the world.

I was surprised I had not run into Boston-based Kevin Calleran, Facebook's 7th employee in my circles before now....now being this past week in of all places, Kentucky. That said, I met the CTO of the White House for the first time in Louisville at Idea's Festival annual event - same time, same place a year ago.

Kevin did a l'il history of Facebook to a less social media savvy crowd than he may be accustomed to in Silicon Valley or Boston. Most people in the room were Facebook users however, which was a mix of high school and college students, academics, innovators, technologists, researchers, artists and local business owners.

Kevin's a natural sales guy and no surprise that its his background and raison d'etre. He's a great storyteller and adds a lot of humor throughout his talk, all done in a very informal style. In the early days, he ran the East Coast office out of his New York City apartment for months before meeting Zuckerberg for the first time. He laughed as he shared stories of the first two years, most of which captured humorous early stage moments.

He moved onto memories....you know, the Facebook kind. Showing a video of a Facebook employee who captured every moment of his life in his timeline (from birth and graduation to marriage, his child being born and beyond, Kevin notes that his only recollection of his grandparents is the four black and white photos in his house.

While he's no longer officially at Facebook, he's certain still a positive spokesperson for the company. He says of Mark's vision: "Mark never wants 'that to ever happen again. Mark feels that every piece of our life should be chronicled."

He then went deeper into the company's history, what Facebook was and where it is today. A few of the latest stats according to Kevin's data:

There are now 955 million active users

Instagram just passed 100 million users

552 million daily active users on average

543 million monthly active users who used Facebook mobile products in June 2012

Facebook is now translated into over 85 languages and has nearly 4,000 employees.

He showed the game that was created over a forty hour period and how Facebook was thereafter translated into 85+ languages. When they launched the translation app, 95% of the site got translated into French in less than 24 hours.

He also heavily encouraged hackathons and believes every company should do them. He says that some of the best products they have ever shipped have come from an all nighter coding event. In other words, "academics meet coder types all night long and great ideas have come out of it."

In addition to a trend of people moving to more of an 'asset-free life,' he shared some of the Emerging Themes are in technology:

Mobile:

Rent or lease only: rather than own something, almost everthing is available to lease or rent, so there's a trend away from owning material things.

The world is moving mobile. 31.5% of U.S. households are mobile only and users log on an average of 77 minutes per day using apps on their smartphone.